Saturday, July 16, 2011

Innkeeper

The staple of the fantasy RPG, obviously I'd have to include this. I've divided the table into four parts; I found that the services that I've placed in stabling and lodging tended to get lost in the cloud of other things for sale.

Nothing on this list can be sold to the Innkeeper; a deal already exists with the local providers, who have exclusive delivery rights. And obviously nothing from the Inn can be sold to people on the street.

I have tried to think of some other service the Inn might provide under the lodging category. I suppose under stabling I could add grooming the animal ... but I'll save a price for that until I can think of something else.

The prices here are higher than the same goods and materials purchased from the brewer or the fishmonger or elsewhere. The reason for that should be obvious.

But there isn't much else I can say ... we know how a hotel and a restaurant works.

13 comments:

Disclaimer: This is not something I am certain is true, so telling me "that's crap" is also useful information to me.

I recall being told that cutlery, steins, dishes and the like were not provided with a meal. Rather you had to bring your own or rent a set from inn. If that is true, would there need to be a separate price, or would it be included in the base price and a discount would be available? A third option is that level of detail is nothing but irritating and is ignored.

I've heard that, Zzarchov, and I believe that it's true. But I can argue that the additional cost is merely worked into the cost at the Inn; granted, I'm not making a concession for people who bring their own eating utensils, but my world is the 17th century, not the 12th.

I tend to agree that the level of detail doesn't need to be that irritating.

I have to assume I missed a comment or disclaimer regarding this, but I'm going to ask anyway: do you have these spreadsheets available online? I can understand if you don't want to make the data "open source". If that or something similar is your concern, consider publishing them using Google docs as a public but read only document. This would also allow you to grant permissions to people you trust who might want to collaborate.

Do your alcohol prices account for the likelihood that you're probably making your wines from surplus fruit that would otherwise rot, or are they assuming grains and fruits specifically grown to go into beer and wine?

In large part fermentation is a preservation technique, which is why I ask. In a world in which moving perishable materials around is difficult and chancy, fermenting your surplus is a good way to not waste it. And then if you have surplus fermented beverage (which does not itself last very long in the presence of air), distilling it into an eau-de-vie is a good way to keep that from falling prey to acetobacter.

You're used to taxation on distilled liquors. Whiskey is actually ridiculously cheap to make; efforts were made in the late 19th century to tax it heavily to keep it out of the hands of the poor, who used to drink it by the barrel. In this case, the "whiskey" is not traditional, but the local version of a fermented liquor made of wheat and sugar. It's easier to call it whiskey so the player knows what the drink is.

Palinka is also made of things that are nearby.

The nearest ale, on the other hand, is hundreds of miles away in Bohemia. That's the reason the price of ale is higher.

Adam,

The alcohol prices are based upon the value of the products adjusted upwards by the labor of the distillers. In every case the unprepared product is used - the cost of picking it off the tree, sowing it, etcetera. No, I'm afraid there are no adjustments downwards for using rotted fruit. You may assume that adjustment is folded into the distilling fee (making it lower if there are more distillers present to take advantage of the rotten food).

I just don't feel the need to get quite that granular. Heck, I haven't even made the prices seasonal. When I figure out how to do that (without driving myself bonkers in the process), then I will.

Per beer being hundreds of miles away - is it just hard to grow barley locally, or is there some other reason? I'm not so much surprised at the cheapness of local distilled alcohol, but that there's no non-distilled local product.

You're thinking like a globalized person, Eric. First, it is not as easy to simply read about how to make beer and than make it. Second, hops not being an extensively grown crop, or malting not being a generalized practice, reduces overall the amount of beer needed to satisfy a very large population. There is obviously plenty of beer, the price is not out of sight for my world, but the amount of beer is rare enough to push the price above some hard liquors. And finally, even if beer is available, the cultural identity of the region might just no be interested in it. Russians, for example, are not big beer drinkers, but consume plenty of vodka.

The reference system, based on information gathered from a source that is NOT me, defines which region is or is not really interested in beer, and the presence of beermakers in general. I am happy that beer making isn't universal, and that some cultures don't drink it. This establishes a unique identity for different regions.

Finally, not to forget, in the 17th century a hundred miles is a lot 'further' than it seems today.

Immediately my thoughts go to how to make 'seasonal' products as you mention it. My initial response is to create four variables to modify the price depending on season, then break each table into four tabs referencing each season (or a ton of ifs and a variable determining which season it is.)

Then of coarse if you wanted to be more granular, you could establish an 'in season' month set and grant that a modifier then set a date on each spreadsheet which would check if it is 'in season' comparing to the base products season min and max.

If you wanted to go further, you could determine a 'time to produce' on intermediate stages making leather goods 'in season' X months after hunting season once they've completely been processed by simply adding to the min/maxes as they go... And of coarse that's using generic seasons not regional.

Well considering the time to research the 'in season' time periods for every product, adding 2 to three cells each seems less taxing to me. Assuming said product would be seasonal at all. As for horrible for low level characters, it's all about the degree of effect seasonal would have. You could modify the price 5% (mostly slight flavor) or 90% or more (crippling winter, cheapass harvests.)

Oddbit: Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be TOO hard to add seasonal production data. For a whole lot of manufactured products, I think you could just copy and paste in 0.9/Spring 1/Summer 0.9/Autumn 0.5/Winter. Then, with trade tables as detailed as Alexis', you could adjust the difficulty and therefore the price of shipping goods. I'd imagine beer would be ruinously expensive in winter if you had to import it 200 miles.

To do that really, really right, you'd need season start times and different seasonal travel difficulties per hex.

And you'd have to figure out to handle monsoons.... a quick glance at Wikipedia seems to read like "crappy wet summer season" to me.

Additional Content

Began playing Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 15, thirty-eight years ago. I am a steadfast AD&D gamer, but I have made so many changes to the original system that my present model is something of a Frankenstein's monster of role-playing design. I continue to make new changes every day to my game's structure and function.

The Net has described me as a 'mad scientist of RPG blogging,' and a 'Quixotic bastard' ... and also 'the most gonzo - and the grouchiest - old school DM.'

Progress on The Fifth Man

For a period going forward, I will be rewriting the last third of the book as a second draft. I will begin recording that progress also as soon as I pick up the task again. It has been more than two weeks now and I apologize to my backers; but rest assured, I'm sorting myself out and I'll get started again soon.

Progress on the third draft, finalized (will likely be some continuity fixes) stand as follows:

June 29, 2017

Distance yesterday: 0 words

Total distance: 75,490

Chapter in progress: 17

Please Support Me

Writing the book takes its toll, particularly as I am just another grunt working for minimum wage in the real world. Every donation helps me have time where I am not performing physical labor and I can put my energy towards the things that you, the reader, likes.